Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Is Any of This Legal?

Kevin K. emails:

I wonder how many people are consider this:

If the effects of the Coronavirus turn out to be overblown, what are the chances that any of these people (Trump, Fauci, Governors, Mayors, etc) would EVER admit it? They've already put people on essentially house arrest for over a month. They've caused businesses to close. They've caused millions of people to lose their jobs. The Fed has printed trillions of dollars, which could lead to massive price inflation.

And is any of this stuff even legal?! At 10:34 of this video, Tucker Carlson asked Governor Phil Murphy (regarding people both practicing their religion and peacefully assembling) where he derived the authority to "nullify the Bill of Rights" in issuing certain orders. Murphy responded "that's above my pay grade. I wasn't thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this".

I am not a big fan of the constitution. It can be misinterpreted or ignored, as we see time after time.

A general PPS attitude in the land of "You leave me alone on my property and I will leave you alone on my property" makes a lot more sense to me than creating a document that allows for officials who can change laws. This is the great flaw of the Constitution.

12 comments:

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he will be signing an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States.

“In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States”, Trump said in a tweet late on Monday.

Technically speaking, governors don't have to think about the Bill of Rights. The BoR only apply to the federal government, at least that was the original intent and interpretation. It it clarified in the preamble to the BoR as well as cases such as Baron v Baltimore. The Doctrine of Incorporation is a relatively new interpretation (about 100 yrs old) that came out of the progressive movement. It essentially turns states into mere administrative units of the federal government and makes ALL issues Federal issues. The States pre-existed the Constitution, created the Constitution and delegated it certain powers. In so doing, they did not lose their own sovereignty. They also had their own constitutions with declarations of rights. Brion McClanahan is the smart man in the room on this topic. All this being said, it does not mean I agree with state draconian measures, and I agree with the general philosophy of RW in living and let living, but it does mean that our fight and redress is with our local government, not the central government. We ought to be more familiar with our state constitutions as much as the federal. More often than not, the governors are probably violating their own state constitutions with these measures.

Rothbard would disagree. In volume 5 of "Conceived in Liberty," Rothbard opines that only the First Amendment was intended to apply only to the federal government, and that the rest also constrain state governments.

Thanks NAPster. Yes, Rothbard and probably Judge Nap would disagree. I'm more convinced by McClanahan's and Kevin Gutzman's arguments to the contrary. I've read and listened to much of their arguments and contextual history that I'm pretty well been won over to their side. I think the preamble to the Bill of Rights is a dead give away. It would be a great debate though.

Why would ANY of the original Constitution and Bill of Rights apply to anyone today? It was the result of an unauthorized Constitutional Convention. The men who designed it didn't ratify it. The States that did ratify it did so in hotly-contested ratifying conventions, which were not unanimous. The ratification processes were marked by chicanery, trickery and underhanded dealing with the delegates who were against ratification (mostly rural people who traveled from far-reaching areas of the states). And no one that ratified it is alive today, and as such, no one alive today consented to it or agreed to be bound by it. And finally, it has been so interpreted, misinterpreted, reinterpreted, twisted, warped, obfuscated and made opaque by layer upon layer of ofttimes politically-motivated or self-serving SCOTUS case law, that it can now be weaponized and used as fodder by most ideologues---including those who seek to expand the powers of the State; It's worthless in arguing the scaling-back of the State, in this day and age. You want to exercise your freedom of speech? Some statist somewhere will throw the canard at you "well, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater! (which is not true, actually). You want to exercise your "2nd Amendment right" and own firearms? Then you can bet that some power-freak politician will try to pass a statute requiring a permit to own ammo, or that you can't buy ammo "in bulk," or raising taxes enormously on ammo...and a myriad of other ways to limit gun ownership or use. For God's sake, SCOTUS ruled that sending American citizens with Japanese blood in their veins to concentration camps, was Constitutional! They ruled that military enslavement (conscription) is Constitutional, as is robbery by government (income taxation). I'm with Lysanner Spooner: Given how out of control and expansive the Federal government is today, it is inarguable that either the Constitution is an utter failure in bridling Federal government expansion, or else it was intentionally designed to allow Federal government expansion (to paraphrase of course).

They have no skin in the game. Even if they admit to mistakes they do not face the consequences that we do.

Legal? The only reason to care about the constitution is that it can be used for and against our freedom. We all know that The Doctrine of Incorporation that SB noted is BS to anyone but the powers that should not be. These many States agreed to the constitution including the Bill of Rights and most states have similar language in their constitutions. But as we have seen legality is determined by the government, which in cases such as this means for the government.

Alaska state troopers say they will not enforce the emergency health mandates in Alaska because they are not “law”. A couple friends and I have looked into the mandate, and besides it being garbage, it’s also voluntary, according to Alaska statute. To enforce any isolation or quarantine, the State must get a superior court order, for each individual or group.So, even if you take out constitutional issues, these mandates don’t hold penalty of law, because they are not law. Good for Alaska Trooper’s. I’ve been told here locally in Fairbanks that the city cops will not enforce any of the mandates either, and was told, the reason being is that they think it is stupid. Not kidding. I read some police union in Texas is refusing to enforce a mask mandate, saying “it’s stupid”.